Get excellent career opportunities by improving your digital literacy skills

Literacy skills affect many aspects of the human life. It allows you to improve your career, Social life, and education. 

Digital literacy especially helps you with boosting your career immensely. With the help of improving literacy skills, many students increase their employability. They find plenty of career opportunities open for them. So improving literacy skills is an important part. So, let’s first find out what is digital literacy;

Digital Literacy

It refers to the knowledge of using new media and new technologies. It allows you to participate in today’s digitized society.

In this new digital society, every individual cannot avoid the technologies, given their enormous economic and social potential and the great benefit they bring to cultural growth through knowledge.

Digital skills also presuppose a solid awareness of IST – Information Society Technologies, which can represent an opportunity to support creativity and innovation. A “digital conscience” allows you to understand the potential risks of the internet and the problems related to the validity and reliability of the information available.

It is not easy to define clearly and unambiguously what the basic skills are & also hard to equate the different levels of users who have independently learned the use of new technologies.

Even today, the high level of digital and IT illiteracy, which affects the ability to move within the information society, prevents the creation of competent digital citizens.

Importance of digital literacy skill development

Improving digital literacy skills among young people: against cyberbullying:

For the so-called digital natives or young people who grew up with technology, the web is an integral part of their lives & not surprisingly, they prove to be the most competent users. However, even in this category, you can find substantial differences. The results of a digital competence test, carried out on a causal sample of students, showed how the students are prepared from a strictly operational point of view but lack critical awareness of the use of the internet.

On the internet, it is much easier to express one’s opinion. Often recklessly, with the sole purpose of surprising and gathering consensus. The so-called “keyboard lions” (people who “spit poison” online) draw strength from the illusion of anonymity and physical distance from the recipients, most often ignoring the enormous consequences of their actions. Depersonalization and de-responsibility are the masters, phenomena not yet sufficiently understood and deepened. Cyberbullies live everything as a joke aimed at causing simple annoyance to the victims. But in reality, it is psychological violence that, in some cases, has led the victim even to make extreme gestures.

Digital literacy does not simply mean knowing how to use a tablet but providing tools to educate students, teachers, and parents to understand and use the network consciously and safely. The fight against fake news and cyberbullying begins, in fact, from the school desks, highlighting the risks that run with a distorted use of the internet.

Digital literacy skills for the elderly:

In the current era, digital illiteracy is still very high. But still, a few groups of people are unaware of it, especially the elderly segment of the population. Digital literacy is, in fact, of fundamental importance to support the inclusion of disadvantaged groups (the elderly, the unemployed, the less well-off, and the disabled) to bridge social inequalities.

According to current research, the elderly are those most at risk of exclusion from the digital society. In this regard, a digital literacy campaign is underway by many public and private institutions. Among the most effective methodologies for computer literacy of the elderly is the so-called intergenerational learning model that provides for a system of connection between schools, digital natives, and elderly centers.

You can not underestimate the need for digital literacy skill development training for each individual. Digital technologies are now present in every aspect of the life of all of us and represent a tool to combat social inequalities. 

The gap between digital literacy, school, and work

The issue of digital literacy is also closely linked to that employment. Technological upheavals involve continuous and profound changes in the world of work & consequently, we must always keep up with these constant transformations. Recently, 9 out of 10 jobs will require digital skills. So improving literacy skills are so necessary nowadays.

Companies are experiencing many difficulties in identifying profiles with necessary digital skills. Schools & universities are not yet able to adequately develop the skills requires for rapid & effective insertion into the world of work. It is, therefore, essential to act on two fronts: more performing training (during the entire course of study) for those who approach jobs in the digital age and reskilling (constant updating of their skills) for those already inserted.

Many top companies have identified the consequences of the fourth industrial revolution highlighting the need for an extraordinary plan for the digital literacy of adults through a synergy between school, university, training, and work.

Lexia Powerup literacy supports students who are non-proficient readers in years 7 and above, read more about it here.